The First Anglo-Afghan War (also known as Disaster in Afghanistan)[3] was fought between the British East India Company and the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842. The war is notorious for the loss of 4,500 British and Indian soldiers, plus 12,000 of their camp followers to Afghan tribal fighters.[2] Initially, the British successfully intervened in a succession dispute between emir Dost Mohammad (Barakzai) and former emir Shah Shujah (Durrani), whom they installed upon conquering Kabul in August 1839. However, in 1841 the Army of the Indus, numbering between 24,000 and 28,000[citation needed] including families of soldiers, military and political pundits, suffered a series of defeats at the hands of rebel Afghan tribesmen.[1] The main British Indian and Sikh force occupying Kabul, having endured harsh winters as well, was almost completely annihilated while retreating in January 1842.[1] It was one of the first major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in Central Asia between Britain and Russia.[4]

The 19th century was a period of diplomatic competition between the British and Russian empires for spheres of influence in Asia known as the "Great Game" to the British and the "Tournament of Shadows" to the Russians.[5] With the exception of the insane Emperor Paul who ordered an invasion of India in 1800 (which was cancelled after his assassination in 1801), no Russian tsar ever seriously considered invading India, but for most of the 19th century, Russia was viewed as "the enemy" in Britain; and any Russian advance into Central Asia was always assumed (in London) to be directed towards the conquest of India, as the American historian David Fromkin observed, "no matter how far-fetched" such an interpretation might be.[6] In 1832, the First Reform Bill lowering the franchise requirements to vote and hold office in the United Kingdom was passed, which the ultra-conservative Emperor Nicholas I of Russia openly disapproved of, settling the stage for an Anglo-Russian "cold war", with many believing that Russian autocracy and British democracy were bound to clash.[7] In 1837, Lord Palmerston and John Hobhouse, fearing the instability of Afghanistan, the Sindh, and the increasing power of the Sikh kingdom to the northwest, raised the spectre of a possible Russian invasion of British India through Afghanistan. The Russian Empire was slowly extending its domain into Central Asia, and this was seen by the East India Company as a possible threat to their interests in India. In 19th century Russia, there was the ideology of Russia's "special mission in the East", namely Russia had the "duty" to conquer much of Asia, through this was more directed against the nations of Central Asia and the alleged "Yellow Peril" of China than India.[8] The British tended to misunderstand the foreign policy of the Emperor Nicholas I as anti-British and intent upon an expansionary policy in Asia; whereas in fact though Nicholas disliked Britain as a liberal democratic state that he considered to be rather "strange", he always believed it was possible to reach an understanding with Britain on spheres of influence in Asia, believing that the essentially conservative nature of British society would retard the advent of liberalism.[9] The main goal of Nicholas's foreign policy was not the conquest of Asia, but rather upholding the status quo in Europe, especially by co-operating with Prussia and Austria, and in isolating France, as Louis Philippe I, the King of the French was a man who Nicholas hated as an "usurper".[10] The duc d'Orleans had once been Nicholas's friend, but when he assumed the throne of France after the revolution of 1830, Nicholas was consumed with hatred for his former friend who, as he saw it, had gone over to what he perceived as the dark side of liberalism.[11]

The Company sent an envoy to Kabul to form an alliance with Afghanistan's Amir, Dost Mohammad Khan against Russia.[12][13] Dost Mohammad had recently lost Afghanistan's second capital of Peshawar to the Sikh Empire and was willing to form an alliance with Britain if they gave support to retake it, but the British were unwilling. Instead, the British feared the French-trained Dal Khalsa, and they considered the Sikh army to be a far more formidable threat than the Afghans who did not have an army at all, instead having only a tribal levy where under the banner of jihad tribesmen would come out to fight for the Emir.[14] The Dal Khalsa was an enormous force that had been trained by French officers, was equipped with modern weapons and was widely considered to be one of the most powerful armies on the entire Indian subcontinent. For this reason, Lord Auckland preferred an alliance with the Punjab over an alliance with Afghanistan, which had nothing equivalent to the Dal Khalsa.[14] The British could have had an alliance with the Punjab or Afghanistan, but not both at the same time.[14] When Governor-General of IndiaLord Auckland heard about the arrival of Russian envoy Count Jan Prosper Witkiewicz (better known by the Russian version of his name as Yan Vitkevich) in Kabul and the possibility that Dost Mohammad might turn to Russia for support, his political advisers exaggerated the threat.[4] Burnes described Witkiewicz: "He was a gentlemanly and agreeable man, of about thirty years of age, spoke French, Turkish and Persian fluently, and wore the uniform of an officer of the Cossacks".[15] The presence of Witkiewicz had thrown Burnes into a state of despair, leading one contemporary to note that he "abandoned himself to despair, bound his head with wet towels and handkerchiefs and took to the smelling bottle".[15] Dost Mohammad had in fact invited Count Witkiewicz to Kabul as a way to frighten the British into making an alliance with him against his archenemy Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja of the Punjab, not because he really wanted an alliance with Russia. The British had the power to compel Singh to return the former Afghan territories he had conquered whereas the Russians did not, which explains why Dost Mohammad Khan wanted an alliance with the British. Alexander Burnes, the Scotsman who served as the East India Company's chief political officer in Afghanistan wrote home after having dinner with Count Witkiewicz and Dost Mohammad in late December 1837: "We are in a mess home. The emperor of Russia has sent an envoy to Kabul to offer...money [to the Afghans] to fight Rajeet Singh!!! I could not believe my own eyes or ears."[14] On 20 January 1838, Lord Auckland sent an ultimatum to Dost Mohammad telling him: "You must desist from all correspondence with Russia. You must never receive agents from them, or have aught to do with them without our sanction; you must dismiss Captain Viktevitch [Witkiewicz] with courtesy; you must surrender all claims to Peshawar".[16] Burnes himself had complained that Lord Auckland's letter was "so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offense", and tried to avoid delivering it for long as possible.[17] Dost Mohammad was indeed offended by the letter, but in order to avoid a war, he had his special military advisor, the American adventurer Josiah Harlan engage in talks with Burnes to see if some compromise could be arranged.[18] Burnes in fact had no power to negotiate anything, and Harlan complained that Burnes was just stalling, which led to Dost Mohammad expelling the British diplomatic mission on 26 April 1838.[18]

British fears of a Russian invasion of India took one step closer to becoming a reality when negotiations between the Afghans and Russians broke down in 1838. The Qajar dynasty of Persia, with Russian support, attempted the Siege of Herat.[5] Herat is a city that had historically belonged to Persia that the Qajar shahs had long desired to take back and is located in a plain so fertile that is known as the "Granary of Central Asia"; whoever controls Heret and the surrounding countryside also controls the largest source of grain in all of Central Asia.[19] Russia, wanting to increase its presence in Central Asia, had formed an alliance with Qajar Persia, which had territorial disputes with Afghanistan as Herat had been part of the Safavid Persia before 1709. Lord Auckland's plan was to drive away the besiegers and replace Dost Mohammad with Shuja Shah Durrani, who had once ruled Afghanistan and who was willing to ally himself with anyone who might restore him to the Afghan throne. At one point, Shuja had hired an American adventurer Josiah Harlan to overthrow Dost Mohammad Khan, despite the fact Harlan's military experience comprised only working as a surgeon with the East India Company's troops in First Burma War.[20] Shuja Shah had been deposed in 1809 and been living in exile in British India since 1818, collecting a pension from the East India Company, which believed that he might be useful one day.[14] The British denied that they were invading Afghanistan, claiming they were merely supporting its "legitimate" Shuja government "against foreign interference and factious opposition."[2] Shuja Shah by 1838 was barely remembered by most of his former subjects and those that did viewed him as a cruel, tyrannical ruler who, as the British were soon to learn, had almost no popular support in Afghanistan.[21]

On October 1, 1838 Lord Auckland issued the Simla Declaration attacking Dost Mohammed Khan for making "an unprovoked attack" on the empire of "our ancient ally, Maharaja Ranjeet Singh", going on to declare that Suja Shah was "popular throughout Afghanistan" and would enter his former realm "surrounded by his own troops and be supported against foreign interference and factious opposition by the British Army".[21] As the Persians had broken off the siege of Herat and the Emperor Nicholas I of Russia had ordered Count Vitkevich home (he was to commit suicide upon reaching St. Petersburg), the reasons for attempting to put Shuja Shah back on the Afghan throne had vanished.[5] The British historian Sir John William Kaye wrote that the failure of the Persians to take Herat "cut from under the feet of Lord Auckland all ground of justification and rendered the expedition across the Indus at once a folly and a crime".[21] But at this point, Auckland was committed to putting Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence and nothing would stop him from going ahead with the invasion.[21] On 25 November 1838, the two most powerful armies on the Indian subcontinent assembled in a grand review at Ferozepore as Ranjit Singh, the Maharajah of the Punjab brought out the Dal Khalsa to march alongside the sepoy troops of the East India Company and the British troops in India with Lord Auckland himself present amid much colorful pageantry and music as men dressed in brightly colored uniforms together with horses and elephants marched in an impressive demonstration of military might.[22] Lord Auckland declared that the "Grand Army of the Indus" would now start the march on Kabul to depose Dost Mohammed and put Shuja Shah back on the Afghan throne, ostensibly because the latter was the rightful Emir, but in reality to place Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence.[5] The Duke of Wellington speaking in the House of Lords condemned the invasion, saying that the real difficulties would only begin after the invasion's success, predicating that Anglo-Indian force would rout the Afghan tribal levy, but then find themselves struggling to hold on given the terrain of the Hindu Kush mountains and Afghanistan had no modern roads, calling the entire operation "stupid" given that Afghanistan was a land of "rocks, sands, deserts, ice and snow".[21]

British India at this time was a proprietary colony run by the East India Company, which had been granted the right to rule India by the British Crown.[23] India was only one of several proprietary colonies in the British Empire around the world, where various corporations or individuals had been granted the right to rule by the Crown, with for instance Rupert's Land, which was a vast tract covering most of what is now Canada being ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company, but India was easily the most wealthy and profitable of all the proprietary colonies. By the 19th century, the East India Company ruled 90 million Indians and controlled 70m acres (243,000 square kilometres) of land under its own flag while issuing its own currency, making it into the most powerful corporation in the world.[24] The East India Company had been granted monopolies on trade by the Crown, but it was not owned by the Crown, through the shares in the East India Company were owned by numerous MPs and aristocrats, creating a powerful Company lobby in Parliament while the Company regularly gave "gifts" to influential people in Britain.[24] The East India Company was sufficiently wealthy to maintain the three Presidency armies, known after their presidencies as the Bengal Army, the Bombay Army and the Madras Army, with the supreme field headquarters for commanding these armies being at Simla.[21] The East India Company's army totaled 200,000 men, making it one of the largest armies in the entire world, and was an army larger than those maintained by most European states.[24] The majority of the men serving in the presidency armies were Indian, but the officers were all British, trained at the East India Company's own officer school at the Addiscombe estate outside of London.[25] Furthermore, the politically powerful East India Company had regiments from the British Army sent to India to serve alongside the East India Company's army.[25] Officers from the British Army serving in India tended to look down on officers serving in the Company's army as mercenaries and misfits, and relations between the two armies were cool at best.[25]

The regiments chosen for the invasion of Afghanistan came from the Bengal and Bombay armies.[25] The commander in India, Sir Henry Fane chose the regiments by drawing lots, which led to the best British regiment, the Third Foot, being excluded while the worst, the Thirteenth Light Infantry were included in the Grand Army of the Indus.[25] The units from the Bengal Army going into Afghanistan were Skinner's Horse, the Forty-third Native Infantry and the Second Light Cavalry, which were all Company regiments while the Sixteenth Lancers and the Thirteenth Light Infantry came from the British Army in India.[25] The units from the Bombay Army chosen for the Grand Army of the Indus were the Nineteenth Native Infantry and the Poona Local Horse, which were Company regiments, and the Second Foot battalion of the Coldstream Guards, the Seventeenth Foot, and the Fourth Dragoons, which were all British Army regiments.[25] Of the two divisions of the Grand Army of the Indus, the Bombay division numbered fifty-six hundred men and the Bengal division numbered ninety-five hundred men.[25] Shuja recruited 6, 000 Indian mercenaries out of his pocket for the invasion.[25] Ranjit Singh, the elderly and ailing Maharaja of the Punjab was supposed to contribute several divisions from the Dal Khasla to the Grand Army of the Indus, but reneged on his promises, guessing that the Anglo-Indian force was sufficient to depose his archenemy Dost Mohammad, and he did not wish to occur the expenses of a war with Afghanistan.[14] Accompanying the invasion force were 38,000 Indian camp followers and 30,000 camels to carry supplies.[25]

The Emirate of Afghanistan had no army, and instead under the Afghan feudal system, the tribal chiefs contributed fighting men when the Emir called upon their services.[26] The Afghans were divided into numerous ethnic groups, of which the largest were the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and the Hazaras, who were all in their turn divided into numerous tribes and clans. Islam was the sole unifying factor binding these groups together, through the Hazaras were Shia Muslims while the rest were Sunni Muslims. The Pashtuns were the dominant ethnic group, and it was with the Pashtun tribes that the British interacted the most. The Pashtun tribesmen had no military training, but the ferociously warlike Pashtuns were forever fighting each other, when not being called up for service for the tribal levy by the Emir, meaning most Pashtun men had at least some experience of warfare.[14] The Pashtun tribes lived by their strict moral code of Pashtunwali ("the way of the Pashtuns") stating various rules for a Pashtun man to live by, one of which was that a man had to avenge any insult, real or imagined, with violence, in order to be considered a man. The standard Afghan weapon was a matchlock rifle known as a juzail.[14]

The "Army of the Indus". which included 21,000 British and Indian troops under the command of John Keane, 1st Baron Keane (subsequently replaced by Sir Willoughby Cotton and then by William Elphinstone) set out from Punjab in December 1838. With them was William Hay Macnaghten, the former chief secretary of the Calcutta government, who had been selected as Britain's chief representative to Kabul. It included an immense train of 38,000 camp followers and 30,000 camels, plus a large herd of cattle. The British intended to be comfortable – one regiment took its pack of foxhounds, another took two camels to carry its cigarettes, junior officers were accompanied by up to 40 servants, and one senior officer required 60 camels to carry his personal effects.[27]

The Opening in to the Narrow Path above the Siri Bolan from James Atkinson's Sketches in Afghaunistan

By late March 1839 the British forces had crossed the Bolan Pass, reached the southern Afghan city of Quetta, and begun their march to Kabul. They advanced through rough terrain, across deserts and 4,000-metre-high[dubious – discuss] mountain passes, but made good progress and finally set up camps at Kandahar on 25 April 1839. After reaching Kandahar, Keane decided to wait for the crops to ripen before resuming his march, so it was not until 27 June that the Grand Army of the Indus marched again.[28] Keane left behind his siege engines in Kandahar, which turned out to be a mistake as he discovered that the walls of the Ghazni fortress were far stronger than he expected.[28] A deserter, Abdul Rashed Khan, a nephew of Dost Mohammad Khan, informed the British that one of the gates of the fortress was in bad state of repair and might be blasted open with a gunpowder charge.[28] Before the fortress, the British were attacked by a force of the Ghilji tribesmen fighting under the banner of jihad who were desperate to kill farangis, a pejorative Pashtun term for the British and were beaten off.[29] The British took fifty prisoners who were brought before Shuja, where one of them stabbed a minister to death with a hidden knife.[29] Shuja had them all beheaded, which Sir John Kaye in his official history of the war to write this act of "wanton barbarity", the "shrill cry" of the Ghazis would be remembered as the "funeral wail" of the government's "unholy policy".[29]

On 22 July 1839, in a surprise attack, the British-led forces captured the fortress of Ghazni, which overlooks a plain leading eastward into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The British troops blew up one city gate and marched into the city in a euphoric mood. In taking this fortress, they suffered 200 men killed and wounded, while the Afghans lost nearly 500 men. 1,600 Afghans were taken prisoner with an unknown number wounded. Ghazni was well-supplied, which eased the further advance considerably.

Following this, the British achieved a decisive victory over Dost Mohammad's troops, led by one of his sons. In August 1839, after thirty years, Shuja was again enthroned in Kabul. Shuja promptly confirmed his reputation for cruelty by seeking to wreck vengeance all who had crossed him as he considered his own people to be "dogs" who needed to be taught to obey their master.[30]

On November 13, 1839, while en route to India, the Bombay column of the British Indian Army attacked, as a form of reprisal, the Baloch tribal fortress of Kalat,[31] from where Baloch tribes had harassed and attacked British convoys during the move towards the Bolan Pass.

Dost Mohammad waged a guerilla war, being defeated in every skirmish he fought, but taunted Macnaughten in a letter with the boast: "I am like a wooden spoon. You may throw me hither and yon, but I shall not be hurt".[32] Dost Mohammad fled with his loyal followers across the passes to Bamyan, and ultimately to Bukhara. Nasrullah Khan, the emir of Bukhara violated the traditional code of hospitability by throwing Dost Mohammad into his dungeon, where he joined Colonel Charles Stoddart.[32] Stoddard had been sent to Bukhara to sign a treaty of friendship and arrange a subsidy to keep Bukhara in the British sphere of influence, but was sent to the dungeon which Nasrullah Khan decided the British were not offering him a big enough bribe.[32] Unlike Stoddart, Dost Mohammad was able to escape from the dungeon in August 1840 and fled south to Afghanistan.[32]

The majority of the British troops returned to India, leaving 8,000 in Afghanistan, but it soon became clear that Shuja's rule could only be maintained with the presence of a stronger British force. The Afghans resented the British presence and the rule of Shah Shuja. As the occupation dragged on, the East India Company's first political officer William Hay Macnaghten allowed his soldiers to bring their families to Afghanistan to improve morale;[33] this further infuriated the Afghans, as it appeared the British were setting up a permanent occupation.[34] Macnaughten purchased a mansion in Kabul, where he installed his wife, crystal chandelier, a fine selection of French wines, and hundreds of servants from India, making himself completely at home.[30] Macnaughten, who had once been a judge in a small town in Ulster before deciding he wanted to be much more than a small town judge in Ireland, was known for his arrogant, imperious manner, and was simply called "the Envoy" by both the Afghans and the British.[30] The wife of one British officer, Lady Florentia Sale created an English style garden at her house in Kabul, which was much admired and in August 1841 her daughter Alexadrina was married at her Kabul home to Lieutenant John Sturt of the Royal Engineers.[30] The British officers staged horse races, played cricket and in winter ice skating over the frozen local pounds, which astonished the Afghans who had never seen this before.[30]

The licentious conduct of the British troops greatly offended the puritanical values of the Afghan men who had always disapproved of premarital sex and were especially enraged to see British infidels take their womenfolk to their beds.[35] In his official history, Sir John William Kaye wrote he sadly had to declare "there are truths which must be spoken", namely there were "temptations which are most difficult to withstand and were not withstood by our English officers" as Afghan women were most attractive and those living in the zenanas (Islamic women's quarters) "were not unwilling to visit the quarters of the Christian stranger".[35] Kaye wrote the scandal was "open, undisguised, notorious" with British officers and soldiers openly having sexual relationships with Afghan women and in a nation like Afghanistan where women were and still are routinely killed in "honour killings" for the mere suspicion of engaging in premarital sex which is seen as a slur against the manhood of their male family members, most Afghan men were highly furious at what they saw as a national humiliation that had questioned their manhoods.[36] A popular ditty among the British troops was: "A Kabul wife under burkha cover, Was never known without a lover".[37] Some of these relationships ended in marriage as Dost Mohammad's niece Jahan Begum married Captain Robert Warburton and a Lieutenant Lynch married the sister of a Ghilzai chief; the fact that both women were very beautiful added to the humiliation of the Afghan men who did not like to see their women fall in love with infidels.[37] One Afghan nobleman Mirza 'Ata wrote: "The English drank the wine of shameless immodesty, forgetting that any act has its consequences and rewards-so that after a while, the spring garden of the King's regime was blighted by the autumn of these ugly events...The nobles complained to each other, "Day by day, we are exposed, because of the English, to deceit and lies and shame. Soon the women of Kabul will give birth to half-caste monkeys-it's a disgrace!"".[38] Afghanistan was such a desperately poor country that even the salary of a British private was considered to be a small fortune, and many Afghan women willingly become prostitutes as an easy way to get rich, much to the intense fury of their menfolk.[39] The East India Company's second political officer Sir Alexander Burnes was especially noted for his insatiable womanizing, settling an example ardently imitated by his men.[36] 'Ata wrote: "Burnes was especially shameless. In his private quarters, he would take a bath with his Afghan mistress in the hot water of lust and pleasure, as the two rubbed each other down with flannels of giddy joy and the talc of intimacy. Two memsahibs, also his lovers, would join them".[40] Of all the aspects of the British occupation, it was sex between Afghan women and British soldiers that most infuriated Afghan men.[37]

Afghanistan had no army, and instead had a feudal system under which the chiefs would maintain a certain number of armed retainers, principally cavalry together with a number of tribesmen who could be called upon to fight in a time of war; when the Emir went to war, he would call upon his chiefs to bring out their men to fight for him.[41] In 1840, the British strongly pressured Shuja to replace the feudal system with a standing army, which threatened to do away with the power of the chiefs, and which the Emir rejected under the grounds that Afghanistan lacked the financial ability to fund a standing army.[42]

Dost Mohammad unsuccessfully attacked the British and their Afghan protégé Shuja, and subsequently surrendered and was exiled to India in late 1840. In 1839–40, the entire rationale for the occupation of Afghanistan was changed by the Oriental Crisis when Mohammad Ali the Great, the vali (governor) of Egypt who was a close French ally, rebelled against the Sublime Porte; during the subsequent crisis, Russia and Britain co-operated against France, and with the improvement in Anglo-Russian relations, the need for a buffer state in Central Asia decreased.[43] The Oriental Crisis of 1840 almost caused an Anglo-French war, which given the long-standing Franco-Russian rivalry caused by Nicholas's detestation of Louis-Philippe as a traitor to the conservative cause, inevitably improved relations between London and St. Petersburg, which ultimately led to the Emperor Nicholas making an imperial visit to London in 1844 to meet Queen Victoria and the Prime Minister Lord Peel. As early as 1838, Count Karl Nesselrode, the Russian Foreign Minister, had suggested to the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, Lord Clanricarde, that Britain and Russia sign a treaty delimiting spheres of influence in Asia to end the "Great Game" once and for all.[44] By 1840 Clanricarde was reporting to London that he was quite certain a mutually satisfactory agreement could be negotiated, and all he needed was the necessary permission from the Foreign Office to begin talks.[45] From Calcutta, Lord Auckland pressed for acceptance of the Russian offer, writing "I would look forward to a tripartite Treaty of the West under which a limit shall be placed to the advance of England, Russia and Persia and under which all shall continue to repress slave dealing and plunder".[45] Through Britain rejected the Russian offer, after 1840 there was a marked decline in Anglo-Russian rivalry and a "fair working relationship in Asia" had developed.[45] The British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston rejected the Russian offer to end the "Great Game" as he believed that as long as the "Great Game" continued, Britain could inconvenience Russia in Asia to better achieve her foreign policy goals in Europe much more than Russia could inconvenience Britain in Asia to achieve her foreign policy goals in Europe.[45] Palmerston noted that because the British had more money to bribe local rulers in Central Asia, this gave them the advantage in this "game", and it was thus better to keep the "Great Game" going.[45] Palmerston believed it was Britain that held the advantage in the "Great Game", that the Russian offer to definitely mark out spheres of influence in Asia was a sign of weakness and he preferred no such treaty be signed.[45] From Palmerston's viewpoint accepting the Russian offer would be unwelcome as the end of the "Great Game" in Asia would mean the redeployment of Russian power to Europe, the place that really counted for him, and it was better to keep the "Great Game" going, albeit at a reduced rate given the tensions with France.[45] At the same time, the lowering of Anglo-Russian tension in the 1840s made holding Afghanistan more of an expensive luxury from the British viewpoint as it not longer seemed quite as essential to have a friendly government in Kabul anymore.[45]

By this time, the British had vacated the fortress of Bala Hissar and relocated to a cantonment built to the northeast of Kabul. The chosen location was indefensible, being low and swampy with hills on every side. To make matters worse, the cantonment was too large for the number of troops camped in it and had a defensive perimeter almost two miles long. In addition, the stores and supplies were in a separate fort, 300 yards from the main cantonment.[46] The British commander, Major-General George Keith Ephinstone who arrived in April 1841 was bed-ridden most of the time with gout and rheumatism.[47]

Between April and October 1841, disaffected Afghan tribes were flocking to support Dost Mohammad's son, Akbar Khan, in Bamiyan and other areas north of the Hindu Kush mountains, organised into an effective resistance by chiefs such as Mir Masjidi Khan[48] and others. In September 1841, Macnaghten reduced the subsidies paid out to Ghazi tribal chiefs in exchange for accepting Shuja as Emir and to keep the passes open, which immediately led to the Ghazis rebelling and a jihad being proclaimed.[49] The monthly subsidies, which were effectively bribes for the Ghazi chiefs to stay loyal, was reduced from 80,000 to 40,000 rupees at a time of rampant inflation, and as the chiefs' loyalty had been entirely financial, the call of jihad proved stronger.[49] Macnaughten did not take the threat seriously at first, writing to Henry Rawlinson in Kandahar on 7 October 1841: "The Eastern Ghilzyes are kicking up a row about some deductions which have been made from their pay. The rascals have completely succeeded in cutting communications for the time being, which is very provoking to me at this time; but they will be well trounced for their pains. One down, t'other come on, is the principle of these vagabonds".[50]

Macnaughten ordered an expedition. On 10 October 1841, the Ghazis in a night raid defeated the Thirty-fifth Native Infantry, but were defeated the next day by the Thirteenth Light Infantry.[50] After their defeat, which led to the rebels fleeing to the mountains, Macnaughten overplayed his hand by demanding that the chiefs who rebelled now send their children to Shuja's court as hostages to prevent another rebellion.[51] As Shuja had a habit of mutilating people who displeased him in the slightest, Macnaghten's demand that the children of the chiefs go to the Emir's court was received with horror, which led the Ghazi chiefs to vow to fight on. Macnaghten who just been appointed the governor of Bombay was torn between a desire to leave Afghanistan on a high note with country settled and peaceful vs. a desire to crush the Ghazis, which lead him to temporize, at one moment threatening the harshest reprisals and the next moment, compromising by abandoning his demand for hostages.[52] Macnaghten's alternating policy of confrontation and compromise was perceived as weakness, which encouraged the chiefs around Kabul to start rebelling.[53] Shuja was so unpopular that many of his ministers and the Durrani clan joined the rebellion[54]

On the night of 1 November 1841, a group of Afghan chiefs met at the Kabul house of one of their number to plan the uprising, which began in the morning of the next day.[50] In a flammable situation, the spark was provided unintentionally by Burnes. A Kashmiri slave girl who belonged to a Pashtun chief Abdullah Khan Achakzai living in Kabul ran away to Burnes's house. When Ackakzai sent his retainers to retrieve her, it was discovered that Burnes had taken the slave girl to his bed, and he had one of Azkakzai's men beaten.[55] A secret jirga (council) of Pashtun chiefs was held to discuss this violation of pashtunwali, where Ackakzai holding a Koran in one hand stated: "Now we are justified in throwing this English yoke; they stretch the hand of tyranny to dishonor private citizens great and small: fucking a slave girl isn't worth the ritual bath that follows it: but we have to put a stop right here and now, otherwise these English will ride the donkey of their desires into the field of stupidity, to the point of having all of us arrested and deported to a foreign field".[55] At the end of his speech, all of the chiefs shouted "Jihad".[55]

Lady Sale wrote in her diary on 2 November 1841: "This morning early, all was in commotion in Kabul. The shops were plundered and the people all fighting."[56] That same day, a mob "thirsting for blood" appeared outside of the house of the East India Company's second political officer, Sir Alexander 'Sekundar' Burnes, where Burnes ordered his sepoy guards not to fire while he stood outside haranguing the mob in Pashto, attempting to unconvincingly persuade the assembled men that he did not bed their daughters and sisters.[57] Captain William Broadfoot who was with Burnes saw the mob march forward, leading him to open fire with another officer writing in his diary that he "killed five or six men with his own hand before he was shot down".[57] The mob smashed in to Burnes's hourse, where he, his brother Charles, their wives and children, several aides and the sepoys were all torn to pieces.[57] The mob then attacked the home of the paymaster Johnston who was not present, leading to later write when he surveyed the remains of his house that they "gained possession of my treasury by undermining the wall...They murdered the whole of the guard (one officer and 28 sepoys), all my servants (male, female, and children), plundered the treasury...burnt all my office records...and possessed themselves of all my private property".[57] The British forces took no action in response despite being only five minutes away, which encouraged further revolt.[57] The only person who took action that day was Shuja who ordered out one of his regiments from the Bala Hissar commanded by an Scots mercenary named Campbell to crush the riot, but the old city of Kabul with its narrow, twisting streets favored the defensive with Campbell's men coming under fire from rebels in the houses above.[58] After losing about 200 men killed, Campbell retreated back to the Bala Hissar.[59] After hearing of the defeat of his regiment, Shuja descended into what Kaye called "a pitiable state of dejection and alarm", sinking into a deep state of depression as it finally dawned on him that his people hated him and wanted to see him dead.[59] Captain Sturt was sent to the Bala Hissar by Elphinstone to see if it were possible to recover control of the city later that afternoon, where his mother-in-law Lady Sale noted in her diary: "Just as he entered the precincts of the palace, he was stabbed in three places by a young man well dressed, who escaped into a building close-by, were he was protected by the gates being shut."[59] Sturt was sent home to be cared for by Lady Sale and his wife with the former noting: "He was covered with blood issuing from his mouth and was unable to articulate. He could not lie down, from the blood choking him", only being capable hours later to utter one word: "bet-ter".[59] Lady Sale was highly critical of Elphinstone's leadership, writing: "General Elphinstone vacillates on every point. His own judgement appears to be good, but he is swayed by the last speaker", criticising him for "...a very strange circumstance that troops were not immediately sent into the city to quell the affair in the commencement, but we seem to sit quietly with out hands folded, and look on".."[59] Despite both being in the cantonment, Elphinstone prefer to write letters to Macnaughten, with one letter on 2 November saying "I have been considering what can done tomorrow" (he decided to do nothing that day), stating "our dilemma is a difficult one", and finally concluding "We must see what the morning brings".[60] The British situation soon deteriorated when Afghans stormed the poorly defended supply fort inside Kabul on November 9.

In the following weeks the British commanders tried to negotiate with Akbar Khan. Macnaghten secretly offered to make Akbar Afghanistan's vizier in exchange for allowing the British to stay, while simultaneously disbursing large sums of money to have him assassinated, which was reported to Akbar Khan.[citation needed] A meeting for direct negotiations between Macnaghten and Akbar was held near the cantonment on 23 December, but Macnaghten and the three officers accompanying him were seized and slain by Akbar Khan. Macnaghten's body was dragged through the streets of Kabul and displayed in the bazaar.[citation needed] Elphinstone had partly lost command of his troops already and his authority was badly damaged.

On 1 January 1842, following some unusual thinking by Elphinstone, which may have had something to do with the poor defensibility of the cantonment, an agreement was reached that provided for the safe exodus of the British garrison and its dependents from Afghanistan.[61] Five days later, the withdrawal began. The departing British contingent numbered around 16,500, of which about 4,500 were military personnel, and over 12,000 were camp followers. Many of the camp followers were Afghan women who had taken British lovers and knew that they would be killed by their vengeful menfolk for having "shamed" their families Lieutenant Eyre commented about the camp followers that "These proved from the very first mile a serious clog on our movements".[62] Lady Sale brought with her 40 servants, none of whom she named in her diary while Lieutenant Eyre's son was saved by a female Afghan servant, who rode through an ambush with the boy on her back, but he never gave her name.[62] The American historian James Perry noted: "Reading the old diaries and journals, it is almost as if these twelve thousand native servants and sepoy wives and children didn't exist individually. In a way, they really didn't. They would die, all of them-shot, stabbed, frozen to death-in these mountain passes, and no one bothered to write down the name of even one of them".[62] The military force consisted mostly of Indian units and one British battalion, 44th Regiment of Foot.

They were attacked by Ghilzai warriors as they struggled through the snowbound passes. On the first day, the retreating force made only five miles and as Lady Sale wrote about their arrival at a village of Begramee: "There were no tents, save two or three small palls that arrived. Everyone scraped away the snow as best they might, to make a place to lie down. The evening and night were intensely cold; no food for man or beast procurable, except a few handful of bhoosay [chopped stew], for which we had to pay five to ten rupees".[63] As the night fell and with it the temperatures dropped well below freezing, the retreating force learned that they lost all of their supplies of food and their baggage.[64] On the second day all of the men of the Royal Afghan Army's 6th regiment deserted, heading back to Kabul, marking the end of the first attempt to give Afghanistan a national army.[63] For several months afterwards, what had once been Shuja's army was reduced to begging on the streets of Kabul as Akbar had of all of Shuja's mercenaries mutilated before throwing them on the streets to beg.[65] Despite Akbar Khan's promise of safe conduct, the Anglo-Indian force was repeatedly attack by the Ghilzais, with one especially fierce Afghan attack being beaten off with a spirited bayonet charge by the 44th Foot.[63]

While trying to cross the Koord-Kabual pass in the Hindu Kush that was described as five miles long and "so narrow and so shut in on either side that the wintry sun rarely penetrates its gloomy recesses", the Anglo-Indian force was ambushed by the Ghilzai tribesmen.[66] Johnson described "murderous fire" that forced the British to abandon all baggage while camp followers regardless of sex and age were cut down with swords.[67] Lady Sale wrote: "Bullets kept whizzing by us" while some of the artillerymen smashed open the regimental store of brandy to get drunk amid the Afghan attacks.[66] Lady Sale wrote she drank a tumbler of sherry "which at any other time would have made me very unlady-like, but now merely warmed me."[66] Lady Sale took a bullet in her wrist while she had to watch as her son-in-law Sturt had "...his horse was shot out from him and before he could rise from the ground he received a severe wound in the abdomen".[66] With his wife and mother-in-law by his side in the snow, Sturt bled to death over the course of the night.[66] The gentle, kindly, but naive and gullible Elphinstone continued to believe that Akbar Khan was his "ally", and believed his promise that he would send out the captured supplies if he stopped the retreat on 8 January.[68] Adding to the misery of the British, that night a ferocious blizzard blew in, causing hundreds to freeze to death.[69]

On 9 January 1842, Akbar sent out a messenger saying he was willing to take all of the British women as hostages, giving his word that they would not be harmed, and otherwise his tribesmen would show no mercy and kill all the women and children.[66] One of the British officers sent to negotiate with Akbar heard him say to his tribesmen in Dari (Afghan Farsi) – a language spoken by many British officers – to "spare" the British while saying in Pashto, which most British officers did not speak, to "slay them all".[70] Lady Sale, her pregnant daughter Alexandria and the rest of British women and children accepted Akbar's offer of safe conduct back to Kabul.[66] As the East India Company would not pay a ransom for Indian women and children, Akbar refused to accept them, and so the Indian women and children died with the rest of the force in the Hindu Kush.[68] The camp followers captured by the Afghans were stripped of all their clothing and left to freeze to death in the snow.[71] Lady Sale wrote that as she was taken back to Kabul she noticed: "The road was covered with awful mangled bodies, all naked".[72]

In the early morning of 10 January, the column resumed its march, with everyone tired, hungry and cold.[68] Most of the sepoys by this time had lost a finger or two to frostbite, and could not fire their guns.[73] At the narrow pass of Tunghee Tareekee, which was 50 yards long, but 4 yards wide, the Ghizye tribesmen ambushed the column, killing without mercy all of the camp followers, and the Anglo-Indian soldiers to fight their way over the corpses of the camp followers with heavy losses to themselves.[68] From a hill, Akbar Khan and his chiefs watched the slaughter while sitting on their horses, being apparently very much amused by the carnage.[68] Captain Shelton and a few soldiers from the 44th regiment held the rear of the column and fought off successive Afghan attacks, despite being outnumbered.[68] Johnson described Shelton as fighting like a "bulldog" with his sword, cutting down any Afghan who tried to take on him so efficiently that by the end of the day no Afghan would challenge him.[74] On the evening of 11 January 1842, General Elphinstone, Captain Shelton, the paymaster Johnston, and Captain Skinner met with Akbar Khan to ask him to stop his attacks on the column.[75] Akbar Khan provided them with warm tea and a fine meal before telling them that they were all now his hostages as he reckoned the East India Company would pay good ransoms for their freedom, and when Captain Skinner tried to resist, he was shot in the face.[75] Command now fell to Brigadier Thomas Anquetil.[75]

The evacuees were killed in huge numbers as they made their way down the 30 miles (48 km) of treacherous gorges and passes lying along the Kabul River between Kabul and Gandamak, and were massacred at the Gandamak pass before a survivor reached the besieged garrison at Jalalabad. At Gandamak, some 20 officers and 45 other ranks of the 44th Foot regiment, together with some artillerymen and sepoys, armed with some 20 muskets and two rounds of ammunition to every man, found themselves at dawn surrounded by Afghan tribesmen.[76] The force had been reduced to fewer than forty men by a withdrawal from Kabul that had become, towards the end, a running battle through two feet of snow. The ground was frozen, the men had no shelter and had little food for weeks. Of the weapons remaining to the survivors at Gandamak, there were approximately a dozen working muskets, the officers' pistols and a few swords. The British formed a square, defeated the first couple of the Afghan attacks, "driving the Afghans several times down the hill" before running out of ammunition, fighting on with their bayonets and swords before being overwhelmed.[76] The Afghans took only 9 prisoners and killed the rest.[77] The remnants of the 44th were all killed except Captain James Souter, Sergeant Fair and seven soldiers who were taken prisoner.[78] The only soldier to reach Jalalabad was Dr. William Brydon and several sepoys over the following nights. Another source states that over one hundred British were taken prisoner.[79]

Many of the women and children were taken captive by the Afghan warring tribes; some of these women married their captors (one such lady was the wife of Captain Warburton), and children taken from the battlefield at the time were later identified in the early part of the 20th century to be those of the fallen soldiers and who were brought up by Afghan families as their own children.[80][81][82][83][84]

At the same time as the attacks on the garrison at Kabul, Afghan forces beleaguered the other British contingents in Afghanistan. These were at Kandahar (where the largest British force in the country had been stationed), Jalalabad (held by a force which had been sent from Kabul in October 1841 as the first stage of a planned withdrawal) and Ghazni. Ghazni was stormed, but the other garrisons held out until relief forces arrived from India, in spring 1842. Akbar Khan was defeated near Jalalabad and plans were laid for the recapture of Kabul and the restoration of British hegemony.

However, Lord Auckland had suffered a stroke and had been replaced as governor-general by Lord Ellenborough, who was under instructions to bring the war to an end following a change of government in Britain. Ellenborough ordered the forces at Kandahar and Jalalabad to leave Afghanistan after inflicting reprisals and securing the release of prisoners taken during the retreat from Kabul.

In August 1842 General Nott advanced from Kandahar, pillaging the countryside and seizing Ghazni, whose fortifications he demolished. Meanwhile, General Pollock, who had taken command of a demoralized force in Peshawar used it to clear the Khyber Pass to arrive at Jalalabad, where General Sale had already lifted the siege. From Jalalabad, General Pollock inflicted a further crushing defeat on Akbar Khan. The combined British forces defeated all opposition before taking Kabul in September. A month later, having rescued the prisoners and demolished the city's main bazaar as an act of retaliation for the destruction of Elphinstone's column, they withdrew from Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. Dost Muhammad was released and re-established his authority in Kabul. He died on June 9, 1863. Dost Mohammad is reported to have said:

I have been struck by the magnitude of your resources, your ships, your arsenals, but what I cannot understand is why the rulers of so vast and flourishing an empire should have gone across the Indus to deprive me of my poor and barren country.[79]

Many voices in Britain, from Lord Aberdeen[85] to Benjamin Disraeli, had criticized the war as rash and insensate. The perceived threat from Russia was vastly exaggerated, given the distances, the almost impassable mountain barriers, and logistical problems that an invasion would have to solve. In the three decades after the First Anglo-Afghan War, the Russians did advance steadily southward towards Afghanistan. In 1842 the Russian border was on the other side of the Aral Sea from Afghanistan; but five years later the tsar's outposts had moved to the lower reaches of the Amu Darya. By 1865 Tashkent had been formally annexed, as was Samarkand three years later. A peace treaty in 1873 with Amir Alim Khan of the Manghit Dynasty, the ruler of Bukhara, virtually stripped him of his independence. Russian control then extended as far as the northern bank of the Amu Darya.

Lady Butler's famous painting of Dr. William Brydon, initially thought to be the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad, helped make Afghanistan's reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies and became one of the great epics of empire.

In 1843 British army chaplain G.R. Gleig wrote a memoir of the disastrous (First) Anglo-Afghan War, of which he was one of the very few survivors. He wrote that it was

a war begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated”.[86]

The battle honour of 'Afghanistan 1839' was awarded to all units of the presidency armies of the East India Company that had proceeded beyond the Bolan Pass, by gazette of the governor-general, dated 19 November 1839, the spelling changed from 'Afghanistan' to 'Affghanistan' by Gazette of India No. 1079 of 1916, and the date added in 1914. All the honours awarded for this war are considered to be non-repugnant. The units awarded this battle honour were:

Emma Drummond's novel Beyond all Frontiers (1983) is based on these events, as are Philip Hensher's Mulberry Empire (2002) and Fanfare (1993), by Andrew MacAllan, a distant relation of Dr William Brydon.

G.A. Henty's children's novel To Herat and Kabul focuses on the Anglo-Afghan War through the perspective of a Scottish expatriate teenager named Angus. Theodor Fontane's poem, Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan (The Tragedy of Afghanistan) also refers to the massacre of Elphinstone’s army.[87]

^Fromkin, David "The Great Game in Asia" pp. 936–51 from Foreign Affairs, Volume 58, Issue 4, Spring 1980 pp. 937–38

^Fromkin, David "The Great Game in Asia" pp. 936–51 from Foreign Affairs, Volume 58, Issue 4, Spring 1980 p. 938

^Eskridge-Kosmach, Alena "The Russian Press and the Ideas of Russia’s ‘Special Mission in the East’ and ‘Yellow Peril’ pp. 661–75 from Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Volume 27, November 2014 pp. 661–62.

^Riasanovsky, Nicholas Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959 p. 255.

^Riasanovsky, Nicholas Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959 pp. 257–58.

^Riasanovsky, Nicholas Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959 p. 258.

1.
Afghanistan
–
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana

2.
1842 retreat from Kabul
–
The 1842 Kabul Retreat took place during the First Anglo-Afghan War. As the army and its numerous dependents and camp-followers began its march, many of the column died of exposure, frostbite or starvation or were killed during the fighting. The Afghans launched numerous attacks against the column as it made progress through the winter snows of the Hindu Kush. The final stand was made just outside a village called Gandamak on 13 January, out of more than 16,000 people from the column commanded by Elphinstone, only one European and a few Indian sepoys reached Jalalabad. Over one hundred British prisoners and civilian hostages were later released, around 2,000 of the Indians, many of whom were maimed by frostbite, survived and returned to Kabul to exist by begging or to be sold into slavery. Some at least returned to India after another British invasion of Kabul several months later, in 2013, a writer for The Economist called the retreat the worst British military disaster until the fall of Singapore exactly a century later. In 1838 the British East India Company feared an increased Russian influence in Afghanistan after Dost Mohammad Barakzai had seized power from former ruler Shuja Shah Durrani in 1834 and he began to assemble his forces in late 1838. The army, under the command of General Sir Willoughby Cotton, with Macnaghten as his chief adviser, in March 1839 they crossed the Bolan Pass and began their march to Kabul. They advanced through rough terrain, crossing deserts and mountain passes at a height of 4,000 metres but made good progress, an Afghan had betrayed his sovereign and the British troops managed to blow one city gate and marched into the city in a euphoric mood. The ample supplies acquired in Ghazni considerably aided the further advance, Dost Mohammad fled and sought refuge in the wilds of the Hindu Kush. Kabul fell without a fight on 6 August 1839, Shuja Shah returned and was proclaimed emir by the British. He established a court in the fortress of Bala Hissar above Kabul, more than a year later, Dost Mohammad surrendered to Macnaghten on 4 November 1840 and was exiled to India. In August 1839, the British refrained from occupying Kabuls citadel and this decision, made on diplomatic grounds, would prove to be a grave military error, as the garrison was sited in a defensively weak position. As political agent and envoy at the court of Shuja Shah, the city was described at the time as clean and pleasant with many spacious wooden houses surrounded by well-kept gardens. The occupiers enjoyed themselves arranging cricket matches, horse races and hunting parties, in the evenings amateur dramatics were staged by East India Company officers and their wives. Performances included Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream and it was considered a special honour to be invited to evening soirées hosted by Lady Florentia Sale, the wife of Brigadier-General Robert Henry Sale. Such social gatherings often saw the serving of salmon and stew with madeira wine, under these conditions, many of the East India Company troops were sent back to their garrisons in India. While the British enjoyed this lifestyle, some Afghans chafed under occupation by a foreign power, Britain had replaced Dost Mohammad, a popular ruler, with Shuja Shah, a weak puppet, who was seen as much more cruel and vindictive to his enemies than his predecessor

3.
British Empire
–
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It originated with the possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23% of the population at the time. As a result, its political, legal, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread, during the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after the American War of Independence caused Britain to lose some of its oldest and most populous colonies. British attention soon turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, after the defeat of France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century. In the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution began to transform Britain, the British Empire expanded to include India, large parts of Africa and many other territories throughout the world. In Britain, political attitudes favoured free trade and laissez-faire policies, during the 19th Century, Britains population increased at a dramatic rate, accompanied by rapid urbanisation, which caused significant social and economic stresses. To seek new markets and sources of raw materials, the Conservative Party under Benjamin Disraeli launched a period of imperialist expansion in Egypt, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand became self-governing dominions. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britains economic lead, subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily upon its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on the military, financial and manpower resources of Britain, although the British Empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after World War I, Britain was no longer the worlds pre-eminent industrial or military power. In the Second World War, Britains colonies in Southeast Asia were occupied by Imperial Japan, despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped to accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britains most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as part of a larger movement in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997 marked for many the end of the British Empire, fourteen overseas territories remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Kingdom is now one of 16 Commonwealth nations, a grouping known informally as the Commonwealth realms, that share a monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was ever heard of his ships again

4.
East India Company
–
The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the Companys shares. Initially the government owned no shares and had only indirect control, during its first century of operation the focus of the Company was trade, not the building of an empire in India. The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own armies, exercising military power. Despite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances, the official government machinery of British India had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies. Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, London merchants presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean, one of them, Edward Bonventure, then sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula and returned to England in 1594. In 1596, three ships sailed east, however, these were all lost at sea. Two days later, on 24 September, the Adventurers reconvened and resolved to apply to the Queen for support of the project, the Adventurers convened again a year later. For a period of fifteen years the charter awarded the newly formed company a monopoly on trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. Anybody who traded in breach of the charter without a licence from the Company was liable to forfeiture of their ships and cargo, the governance of the company was in the hands of one governor and 24 directors or committees, who made up the Court of Directors. They, in turn, reported to the Court of Proprietors, ten committees reported to the Court of Directors. According to tradition, business was transacted at the Nags Head Inn, opposite St Botolphs church in Bishopsgate. Sir James Lancaster commanded the first East India Company voyage in 1601, in March 1604 Sir Henry Middleton commanded the second voyage. Early in 1608 Alexander Sharpeigh was appointed captain of the Companys Ascension, thereafter two ships, Ascension and Union sailed from Woolwich on 14 March 1607–8. Initially, the company struggled in the trade because of the competition from the already well-established Dutch East India Company. The company opened a factory in Bantam on the first voyage, the factory in Bantam was closed in 1683. During this time belonging to the company arriving in India docked at Surat. In the next two years, the company established its first factory in south India in the town of Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal

5.
Prisoner of war
–
A prisoner of war is a person, whether combatant or non-combatant, who is held in custody by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the prisoner of war dates to 1660. The first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite, Thracian, typically, little distinction was made between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although women and children were more likely to be spared. Sometimes, the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture women, a known as raptio. Typically women had no rights, and were legally as chattel. For this he was eventually canonized, during Childerics siege and blockade of Paris in 464, the nun Geneviève pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response. Later, Clovis I liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so, many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In the later Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat, in Christian Europe, the extermination of heretics was considered desirable. Examples include the 13th century Albigensian Crusade and the Northern Crusades, likewise, the inhabitants of conquered cities were frequently massacred during the Crusades against the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed, their families would have to send to their captors large sums of wealth commensurate with the status of the captive. In feudal Japan there was no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, in Termez, on the Oxus, all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, and divided in accordance with their usual custom, then they were all slain. The Aztecs were constantly at war with neighbouring tribes and groups, for the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, between 10,000 and 80,400 persons were sacrificed. During the early Muslim conquests, Muslims routinely captured large number of prisoners, aside from those who converted, most were ransomed or enslaved. Christians who were captured during the Crusades, were either killed or sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom. The freeing of prisoners was highly recommended as a charitable act, there also evolved the right of parole, French for discourse, in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain better accommodations, if he swore to cease hostilities against the nation who held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity. Early historical narratives of captured colonial Europeans, including perspectives of literate women captured by the peoples of North America. The writings of Mary Rowlandson, captured in the fighting of King Philips War, are an example

6.
Company rule in India
–
Company rule in India refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company over parts of the Indian subcontinent. The Companys rule lasted until 1858, when, after the Indian rebellion of 1857, with the Government of India Act 1858, the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj. The English East India Company was founded in 1600, as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, in 1640, after receiving similar permission from the Vijayanagara ruler farther south, a second factory was established in Madras on the southeastern coast. Bombay island, not far from Surat, a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II, was leased by the Company in 1668. Two decades later, the Company established a presence on the eastern coast as well, far up that coast, in the Ganges river delta, the Company thus became the de facto ruler of large areas of the lower Gangetic plain by 1773. It also proceeded by degrees to expand its dominions around Bombay, the Anglo-Mysore Wars and the Anglo-Maratha Wars left it in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej River. With the defeat of the Marathas, no native power represented a threat for the Company any longer, the proliferation of the Companys power chiefly took two forms. The first of these was the annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions. The annexed regions included the North-Western Provinces, Delhi, Assam, in 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later. The second form of asserting power involved treaties in which Indian rulers acknowledged the Companys hegemony in return for limited internal autonomy, since the Company operated under financial constraints, it had to set up political underpinnings for its rule. The most important such support came from the alliances with Indian princes during the first 75 years of Company rule. In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-thirds of India, in return, the Company undertook the defense of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honor. Subsidiary alliances created the states, of the Hindu maharajas. 1765, Nawabs of Bengal and Murshidabad, annexed after the Battle of Buxar,1795, Asaf Jah II the Nizam of Hyderabad was defeated at the Battle of Kharda, after the Maratha-Mysore War. 1799, Fall of Mysore after Siege of Seringapatam,1801, Nawab of the Carnatic, Nawab of Junagarh, Rohilkhand of Lower Doab, annexed. 1803, Rohilkhand of Upper Doab, annexed, nonresistance from the Emperor, clives victory, and the award of the diwani of the rich region of Bengal, brought India into the public spotlight in Britain. By 1772, the Company needed British government loans to stay afloat, the rights and duties of the British government with regards the Companys new territories came also to be examined. It could do this while concurrently being subject to oversight and regulation by the British government and parliament, the Court of Directors of the Company were required under the Act to submit all communications regarding civil, military, and revenue matters in India for scrutiny by the British government

7.
Barakzai dynasty
–
The two branches of the Barakzai dynasty ruled modern day Afghanistan from 1826 to 1973 when the monarchy ended under Musahiban Mohammad Zahir Shah. The Barakzai dynasty was established by Dost Mohammad Khan after the Durrani dynasty of Ahmad Shah Durrani was removed from power. During this era, Afghanistan saw much of its territory lost to the British in the south and east, Persia in the west, there were also many conflicts within Afghanistan, including the three major Anglo-Afghan Wars and the 1929 civil war. The Barakzai dynasty was the line of rulers in Afghanistan in the 19th and 20th centuries, following the fall of the Durrani Empire in 1826, chaos reigned in the domains of Ahmed Shah Durranis Afghan Empire as various sons of Timur Shah struggled for supremacy. The Afghan Empire ceased to exist as a nation state. Dost Mohammad Khan gained preeminence in 1826 and founded the Barakzai dynasty in about 1837, thereafter, his descendants ruled in direct succession until 1929, when King Amanullah Khan abdicated and his cousin Mohammed Nadir Shah was elected king. The most prominent & powerful sub-clan of the Barakzai Pashtun tribe is the Mohamedzai clan, currently, Gul Agha Sherzai is the Khan of the Barakzai tribe. He is Senior Advisor to the President of Afghanistan and also Governor of Nangarhar Province, a family of Barakzai Tribe is residing in village Tordher of District Swabi of Khyber PukhtoonKhwa. Mohammadzai are the most prominent & powerful sub-tribe of Barakzai, they belong to the branch of the Durrani confederacy and they can also be found in other provinces throughout Afghanistan as well across the border in the Pakistans Balochistan Province. Musahiban are the descendants of Sultan Muhammed Khan, ruler of Peshawar, Mohammadzai Barakzai are closely related to Amanullah Khan. The family of Nadir and Zahir Shah, the Tarzi family is a branch of the Mohammadzai of Afghanistan. Although a smaller branch of the Barakzai ruling dynasty, the Tarzi family has produced some of the most famous, formerly, Dari Persian was used as the language for records and correspondence, until the late nineteenth century tombstones were also inscribed in Dari. The language of the Barakzai tribes in Pishin, Quetta, Gulistan and those who have settled away from Pishin speak local languages, such as Multani or Saraiki in Multan, Hindko in Hazara, Urdu in Bhopal and Sindhi in Sindh. Barakzai, a dialect of Pashto, is the language spoken by Harnai Barakzai

8.
Kabul
–
Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan as well as its largest city, located in the eastern section of the country. According to a 2015 estimate, the population of the city was around 3,678,033 which includes all the ethnic groups. Rapid urbanization had made Kabul the worlds 64th largest city and the fifth fastest-growing city in the world, Kabul is said to be over 3,500 years old, mentioned since at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire. The city is at a location along the trade routes of South and Central Asia. It has been part of the Achaemenids, Seleucids, Mauryans, Kushans, Kabul Shahis, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Later, it was controlled by the Mughal Empire until finally becoming part of the Durrani Empire in 1747. The city is located high up in a valley between the Hindu Kush mountains. Kabul became the capital of Afghanistan during the reign of Timur Shah Durrani, in the early 19th century, the British occupied the city but were compelled to abandon it. Relations between Afghanistan and Great Britain were later established, the city was occupied by the Soviets in 1979 but they too abandoned it after the 1988 Geneva Accords were signed. A civil war in the 1990s between various rebel groups destroyed much of the city, resulting in many casualties, since the removal of the Taliban from power in late 2001, the city gradually began rebuilding itself with assistance by the international community. Despite the many terrorist attacks by elements, the city is growing and developing. The city is divided into about 18 districts, the Kabul International Airport is located in the Wazir Akbar Khan district a few miles from the foreign embassies. The Parliament of Afghanistan, built by India, is located in the Kārte Seh district, Kabul, also spelled Cabool, Caubul, Kabol, or Cabul. The word Kubhā is mentioned in the Rigveda, one of the four sacred texts of Hinduism, and the Avesta. The Rigveda praises it as a city, a vision of paradise set in the mountains. The area in which the Kabul valley sits was ruled by the Medes before falling to the Achaemenids, there is a reference to a settlement called Kabura by the rulers of the Achaemenid Empire, It became a center of Zoroastrianism followed by Buddhism and Hinduism. The region became part of the Seleucid Empire but was given to the Indian Maurya Empire. The Greco-Bactrians captured Kabul from the Mauryans in the early 2nd century BC, indo-Scythians expelled the Indo-Greeks by the mid 1st century BC, but lost the city to the Kushan Empire about 100 years later. Some historians ascribe Kabul the Sanskrit name of Kamboja and it is mentioned as Kophes or Kophene in some classical writings

9.
History of Afghanistan
–
The Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up to large parts of Afghanistan in the north, with several sites being known. Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army arrived at what is now Afghanistan in 330 BCE after conquering Persia during the Battle of Gaugamela, Afghanistan has been a strategically important location throughout history. The land served as a gateway to India, impinging on the ancient Silk Road, the archaeological manifestation of the Indo-Iranians before their split into separate language groups is generally seen as the Andronovo culture to the north of present-day Afghanistan. The Iranian languages were developed by one branch of these people, elena E. Kuzmina argues that the tents of Iranian-speaking nomads of Afghanistan developed from the light surface houses of the Eurasian steppe belt in the Bronze Age. The Arab invasions influenced the culture of Afghanistan, and its period of Zoroastrian, Macedonian, Buddhist. Turkic empire-builders such as the Ghaznavids and Timurids made the now called Afghanistan of major importance. Mirwais Hotak followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani unified Afghan tribes and founded the last Afghan Empire in the early 18th century CE, a cave called Kara Kamar contained Upper Paleolithic blades Carbon-14 dated at 34,000 years old. Farming communities in Afghanistan were among the earliest in the world, archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation in Afghanistan from as far back as 50,000 BC. The artifacts indicate that the people were small farmers and herdsmen, very probably grouped into tribes. Urbanization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE, Zoroastrianism predominated as the religion in the area, even the modern Afghan solar calendar shows the influence of Zoroastrianism in the names of the months. Other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism flourished later, leaving a mark in the region. Early inhabitants, around 3000 BCE were likely to have been connected through culture and trade to neighboring civilizations like Jiroft and Tappeh Sialk and the Indus Valley Civilization. Urban civilization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE and it is possible that the city of Mundigak was a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. The first known people were Indo-Iranians, but their date of arrival has been estimated widely from as early as about 3000 BCE to 1500 BCE, the Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization extending from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. Apart from Shortughai is Mundigak another notable site, there are several other smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well. The Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex became prominent in the southwest region between 2200 and 1700 BCE, the city of Balkh was founded about this time. It is possible that the BMAC may have been an Indo-European culture, but the standard model holds the arrival of Indo-Aryans to have been in the Late Harappan which gave rise to the Vedic civilization of the Early Iron Age

10.
Indus Valley Civilisation
–
The Indus Valley Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation mainly in the northwestern regions of South Asia, extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India. Along with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia it was one of three early civilisations of the Old World, and of the three, the most widespread, at its peak, the Indus Civilisation may have had a population of over five million. Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley developed new techniques in handicraft, the Indus cities are noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, and clusters of large non-residential buildings. The discovery of Harappa, and soon afterwards, Mohenjo-Daro, was the culmination of work beginning in 1861 with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj, excavation of Harappan sites has been ongoing since 1920, with important breakthroughs occurring as recently as 1999. This Harappan civilisation is called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from the cultures immediately preceding and following it. The early Harappan cultures were preceded by local Neolithic agricultural villages, as of 1999, over 1,056 cities and settlements had been found, of which 96 have been excavated, mainly in the general region of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra Rivers and their tributaries. Among the settlements were the urban centres of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, Ganeriwala in Cholistan. The Harappan language is not directly attested and its affiliation is uncertain since the Indus script is still undeciphered, a relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo-Dravidian language family is favoured by a section of scholars. Recently, Indus sites have been discovered in Pakistans northwestern Frontier Province as well, other IVC colonies can be found in Afghanistan while smaller isolated colonies can be found as far away as Turkmenistan and in Maharashtra. The largest number of colonies are in the Punjab, Sindh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Indus Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient seacoast, for example, Balakot, and on islands, for example, Dholavira. There is evidence of dry river beds overlapping with the Hakra channel in Pakistan, many Indus Valley sites have been discovered along the Ghaggar-Hakra beds. Among them are, Rupar, Rakhigarhi, Sothi, Kalibangan, Harappan Civilisation remains the correct one, according to the common archaeological usage of naming a civilisation after its first findspot. John wrote, I was much exercised in my mind how we were to get ballast for the line of the railway and they were told of an ancient ruined city near the lines, called Brahminabad. Visiting the city, he found it full of hard well-burnt bricks, and, convinced there was a grand quarry for the ballast I wanted. These bricks now provided ballast along 93 miles of the track running from Karachi to Lahore. In 1872–75, Alexander Cunningham published the first Harappan seal and it was half a century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. J. H. MacKay, and Marshall. By 1931, much of Mohenjo-Daro had been excavated, but excavations continued, such as that led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, director of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1944. Among other archaeologists who worked on IVC sites before the independence in 1947 were Ahmad Hasan Dani, Brij Basi Lal, Nani Gopal Majumdar, and Sir Marc Aurel Stein

Tents of Afghannomads in the northern Badghis province of Afghanistan. Early peasant farming villages came into existence in Afghanistan about 7,000 years ago.

Arachosia, Aria and Bactria were the ancient satraps of the Achaemenid Empire that made up most of what is now Afghanistan during 500 BCE. Some of the inhabitants of Arachosia were known as Pactyans, whose name possibly survives in today's Pakhtuns (Pashtuns).